From Medical School to Impact Entrepreneurship: How Todd Khozein Leveraged Systems Thinking to Create Change

Todd Khozein’s journey from medical school to founding SecondMuse was fueled by a lifelong passion for understanding and improving social and economic systems. As a young refugee from Iran who settled in the U.S., Khozein struggled to reconcile the racism and inequality he observed with his belief that more just systems were possible. These experiences drove Khozein to found SecondMuse in 2008, an impact and innovation firm dedicated to fostering systemic change.

In this exclusive interview with Entrepreneur Loop, Khozein explains how his unconventional background shaped SecondMuse’s unique approach to creating resilient economies that benefit people and the planet. Trained as a medical doctor, Khozein views economic systems through a biological lens, seeking to understand how economies can become sick and designing interventions that foster health and sustainability.

Over the past 15 years, SecondMuse has delivered over $10 billion in social impact across more than 160 countries by building relationships, designing solutions, and catalyzing change. As SecondMuse looks ahead to the future, Khozein shares his vision for innovating financial instruments to better drive positive outcomes, reflecting his lifelong commitment to improving systems that shape our shared future.

Please provide a brief intro of yourself and your background.

• I am the Founder and CEO of SecondMuse, an impact and innovation company dedicated to building resilient economies.
• My perspective on economic development and systems theory is deeply influenced by my personal history and a commitment to lifelong learning. Having left my home country of Iran to find refuge in Latin America before ultimately settling in the United States, I have struggled to make sense of racism and glaring inequality. These experiences shaped my belief that economic and social systems can be built inclusively and not at the expense of human dignity or the health of the planet.
• I continued to dwell on broken social systems as I pursued a medical degree at the University of New Mexico, where I began to imagine the human body as a framework for understanding economies. I saw that cancers hoard resources for a select few, and pathogens ravage cells throughout the entire system. After earning my degree, I  continued to study economic modeling based on biological systems, further solidifying my belief that all systems—whether broken or thriving—were the result of design.
• In 2008, I co-founded SecondMuse. Over the last 15 years, we have generated $10B in social and environmental impact, reaching over 160 countries and territories, prototyping 11,000 ideas for innovative solutions, and funding over $18 million to directly support over 1,200 portfolio companies. These supported ventures have, in turn, raised over $850 million in additional funding during their involvement with SecondMuse programs. We have developed a global reach and collaborated with renowned organizations like NASA, Nike, The Rockefeller Foundation, and more.

Please tell us a bit more about your startup/company – what does it offer, what problem does it solve, and who is your target audience?

• SecondMuse is an impact and innovation company addressing climate, equity, and tech challenges. We bring together innovators, entrepreneurs, and community resources to create market-driven solutions that benefit people and the planet. Our focus on building relational infrastructure drives deep and lasting outcomes, uniting diverse stakeholders for transformative change. Our adaptability in climate, equity, and tech realms fosters a regenerative future.
• We aim to bring about transformative change by understanding systems, designing solutions, and implementing them in alignment with reshaping relationships between people, communities, organizations, and the planet. Because of our highly collaborative approach, our audiences range from innovators and entrepreneurs to organizations and corporations.

How did you identify a gap in the market or need that your business fulfills?

• When we founded SecondMuse, dialogues about market impacts and climate change were limited, and resources for marginalized communities were confined to international development. Seeing an opportunity, we built a firm dedicated to creating markets that benefit people and protect the planet. Over the last 15 years, we’ve returned to core questions around our vision for the future, how to make it a reality, and what we need to get there. Today, we are at the forefront of blending economic prosperity with environmental sustainability.

What have been some of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make as a founder? Any stand out as pivotal?

• As an entrepreneur, navigating the delicate balance between maintaining relationships and making tough, vital choices for your business growth is inevitable. Early on in the development of our business, we had a client that represented about 80% of our revenue. As our partnership continued, we recognized that the work didn’t align with who we wanted to be as an organization. Making a decision that can threaten the livelihood of your colleagues is never easy, but going down a path that didn’t align with our mission was a non-starter. We found that staying true to our core values was key to sustainable success, paving the way for opportunities that resonated deeply with our mission and vision.

What have been your key strategies for growth and gaining traction?

• For many years, we didn’t have dedicated business development or marketing and communications teams. Our primary growth strategy was predicated on the delivery of outstanding work, with the expectation that it would naturally attract more opportunities. At a certain point, relying solely on organic growth becomes unsustainable and inconsistent as the organization expands. We’ve established specialized teams in the last few years to concentrate on growth. Still, our core strategy remains centered around cultivating strong relationships with individuals we enjoy working with.

How do you stand out from the competition in your space? What sets you apart?

• We are building economies that are good for people and heal the planet, but our argument is not necessarily moral; it’s economic. When our economies include more people and don’t destroy the environment they depend on, they’ll be more innovative, creative, and sustainable.
• SecondMuse stands out in the impact and innovation space through our unique, holistic approach to fostering systemic change. Our method has three core phases: Discover, Design, and Implement.
• During the Discover phase, we amalgamate diverse perspectives to comprehensively research and strategize for systemic transformation, leveraging our proprietary tools for deep insights into community needs and system dynamics.
• The Design phase sees us co-creating with communities, blending lived experiences, proven methodologies, and traditional wisdom to forge actionable, strategic visions and program designs.
• Finally, in the implementation phase, we scale these solutions to reshape systems globally, supporting entrepreneurs, building capacities, fostering innovation, and developing ecosystems that collectively drive transformational change.
• This adaptive, inclusive approach allows us to address the world’s most pressing climate, equity, and technology challenges. Across all of our work, we are committed to building and maintaining relational infrastructure while developing solutions centered around the community’s needs. This strategy differentiates us from other organizations and generates lasting and meaningful impact.

What do you find the most rewarding or challenging about being an entrepreneur?

• We all have unique insights into today’s world and how we can make tomorrow better. Entrepreneurship allows us to dedicate our lives to seeing those insights play out. Building something you believe in from scratch can be challenging, but it helps that we have an extraordinary amount of choice in who we surround ourselves with on that journey.
• The early stages of entrepreneurship often require us to juggle multiple roles, some of which we may not excel at—accepting that it’s okay not to be good at everything you have to do can be challenging in the early days.

What are some future goals or plans you have for your business in the next few years?

• We’ve spent the last few years building out our financial instrument design and asset management capabilities. One of the challenges we see is that today’s traditional financial instruments were not designed to create positive social and environmental benefits. So, they are ultimately limited in how well they can be used for those outcomes. I’m excited about scaling this work with impact in mind.

Through deep insights into economic systems and steadfast collaboration with partners worldwide, Todd Khozein has led SecondMuse in developing a bold vision for the future – one where economies prosper in harmony with people and planet. As SecondMuse continues to scale its impact, Khozein’s unconventional path offers invaluable lessons on the power of systems thinking and relational infrastructure to drive transformative change.